Download Different Kinds of Specificity Across Languages by Cornelia Ebert, Stefan Hinterwimmer PDF

This anthology of papers analyzes more than a few specificity markers present in common languages. It displays the truth that regardless of extensive examine into those markers, the substantial transformations among the markers throughout languages or even inside unmarried languages were much less stated. often appeared particular indefinites are on no account a homogenous classification, and so this quantity fills a spot in our figuring out of the semantics and pragmatics of indefinites.

The papers discover variations and similarities between those specificity markers, targeting the next matters: no matter if specificity is a merely semantic or additionally a practical notion; no matter if the contribution of specificity markers is found at the point of the at-issue content material; even if a few form of speaker-listener asymmetry about the identity of the referent is concerned; and the behavioral scope of those indefinites within the context of different quantifiers, negation, perspective verbs, and intensional/modal operators.

The principal objective of this learn is to clarify the character of the semantics / pragmatics contrast in either synchrony and diachrony. the writer proposes a definition of semantics and pragmatics that's orthogonal to the query of truth-conditionality, and discusses the prestige of assorted different types of that means with admire to this definition.

This can be the 1st ebook to technique depictive secondary predication - a sizzling subject in syntax and semantics learn - from a crosslinguistic point of view. It maps out all of the appropriate phenomena and brings jointly serious surveys and new contributions on their morphosyntactic and semantic homes.

The pioneering linguist Benjamin Whorf (1897--1941) grasped the courting among human language and human considering: how language can form our innermost concepts. His easy thesis is that our belief of the area and our methods of puzzling over it are deeply prompted by means of the constitution of the languages we communicate.

This instruction manual contains, in 3 volumes, an in-depth presentation of the state-of-the-art in linguistic semantics from a large choice of views. It includes 112 articles written by way of prime students from worldwide. those articles current targeted, but available, introductions to key matters, together with the research of particular semantic different types and structures, the historical past of semantic learn, theories and theoretical frameworks, method, and relationships with comparable fields; furthermore, they provide professional counsel on themes of dialogue in the box, at the strengths and weaknesses of current theories, and at the most likely instructions for the long run improvement of semantic study.

Hintikka (1986, ex. 25) for some discussion of the pragmatic effect of combining English a certain with proper names, Jayez and Tovena (2002) for un certain-indefinites combined with proper names and Eguren and Sánchez (2007) for Spanish cierto in combination with proper names. 4 See Houghton (2000) for a similar observation about English certain combined with proper names. 36 C. Ebert et al. between (7a-g) and (7a-ø) in connection with (7b). While the former discourse (7a-g) + (7b) is incoherent, (7a-ø) + (7b) is perfectly okay.

Oh! Un colis bien précis! ‘Oh! ’ (46) Oh! Un colis! Et un colis BIEN PRÉCIS, en fait! ‘Oh! A package! ’ I note en passant that the same is true for pas n’importe quel N (not any N): (47) *Oh! Pas n’importe quel colis! ‘Oh! ’ (48) Oh! Un colis! Et pas N’IMPORTE QUEL colis! ‘Oh! A package! ’ To explain the problem, one has to investigate further the semantic and pragmatic properties of the exclamatives under study. 8 There are at least two types of Oh! ENSs in French. As already suggested above, the ones under study implicate that the speaker is surprised to perceive the referred entity a in the current situation Su at the utterance time tu .

41) Oh! A man with a red suit! 7 I propose to assume that from the fact that indefinites in ENSs are attributively used, we can derive that they are predicate nominals (these being attributively used by definition). In other words, a sentence like (2) can be paraphrased as follows: (2) Oh! A package! I am surprised by the presence of what I see in front of me and I am surprised that it is a package. One advantage of this hypothesis is that it can explain why un certain N or generalized quantifiers like chaque N are not acceptable in ENSs.